I have been involved in high tech, graphic arts, computer software and hardware design for more than 40 years.

I've been blogging about vaping since early 2009.

I work on advanced robot vision and software technology.

I own my own business.

I have set up this blog to talk about who I am, what I do, and to publish my opinions...

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Wednesday, December 7, 2011

Is the USA a "Bad Influence" on Mexican Children?

The array of what is considered disease by the medical profession is extremely interesting.

This link will take you to a discussion of "conduct disorder" as its associated with migrating from Mexico to the USA. The bottom line is that if you "migrate" from Mexico to the US you suffer from a much higher degree than normal of one of a frightening array of "conduct disorders" (from "forced sex" to "truancy").

Now personally I have to wonder why this is a medical issue at all.

I would think of it as a criminal issue, particularly "disorders" like "forced sex."

There are also multiple aspects of this, i.e., why does someone migrate in the first place. Of course the standard "template" for this is someone in Mexico migrates to the US for work or crime. If for work typically its someone who has a family and, once finding an under-the-table job, sends money home to bring their family here. For crime one presumes the drug cartels smuggle the person across the boarder to act at the minion of the cartel.

Personally I would not be too worried about "conduct disorder" as it relates to criminals. One would reasonably assume they already have a "conduct disorder" which is why they are a criminal in the first place.

So let's take them out of the mix.

So we are left with various forms of "migrant workers." Here the spectrum would range anywhere from some random person looking, on an individual basis, for a better life to family members pioneering into a new country for a better life with the prospect of eventually bringing across the remainder of the family.

But the article kind of goes in an unexpected direction with this zinger:

"The rate of conduct disorder increased significantly as the connection to the U.S. strengthened -- 0.9% for nonmigrant families, 1.6% for Mexicans in migrant families, 6.9% for offspring raised in the U.S. by Mexican-born parents, and 11.5% for offspring raised in the U.S. by U.S.-born parents of Mexican descent (P<0.001)."

So I guess what this means is that the stronger your "association" with the USA the worse you behave. Moving here makes your behavior the worst. Not coming at all the best.

And this as a presumably reproducible scientific "fact" - if you could call it that.

To me this says that if you stay in Mexico you are less likely to engage in various behaviors related to conduct disorder. (Which are separated into "non-aggressive," truancy I suppose, and "aggressive" - forced sex?? These details are not spelled out...)

So this means that in Mexico, if you are not a truant, a move to the USA is more likely to make you a truant. (This is only spelled out for the "non aggressive" case. Its unclear what's going on for the aggressive case and leaves on the speculate on why its not mentioned.)

Seems to mean that this instead says the US is a bad influence.

Stay in Mexico and your child is more likely to attend school.

Interesting.

The article then branches off into a weak discussion of "genetic" aspects of all this.

As if...

So what does this all mean?

Its really hard to tell, but I think it means that if you come here from Mexico (and I don't see any reason to think its just Mexico) you are on your way to "conduct disorder." Since kids are most often truant you child is being lead down the wrong road.

Seems like a sociological or justice issue to me.

I have to believe that its the same for all sorts of migrations - clearly wave of immigrants in the past to the US, say for Italy, resulted in criminal activity like the Mafia being "imported."

But this is different - in that case the Mafia existed in Sicily prior to migration to the US.

This means that those who do no have problems "acquire" them here.

I don't think its a medical issue...

I imagine that since there is no discussion of "aggressive" issues in this article it means that coming to the US makes you more likely to be a "better criminal" - forced sex = rape = felony - so a better "felon" if you would. Not mentioning it keeping it out of your mind entirely, which I think is dishonest.